


Heatwaves

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 1930s, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:46:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7494345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the end of June, the endless heat of summer, less than two weeks to Steve's birthday and a chance that they'd be nothing but puddles of sweat and scorched skin by the time the sun finally set, too hot to make it to July.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heatwaves

**Author's Note:**

> greenbergsays asked: "Imagine your OTP sitting side by side on a bench, watching the sunset. Person A reaches over and takes Person B’s hand but doesn’t make a big deal about it but Person B is internally screaming that it’s about damn time." (So they're not on a bench, and they're not exactly watching the sunset, and no one's internally screaming. But otherwise.)

It was a Saturday at the end of June, temperature pushing ninety. It had just gone eight—they could hear the radio through the Browns’ open window, the announcer sounding worn out by the tenth inning of the Yankees game—but the sun had barely reached the tops of the Manhattan skyscrapers, still flickering from yellow to orange in the smog and entirely too damn hot.

Steve and Bucky were on the roof; they’d been there since the top of the sixth inning, Steve home after six from the hospital filing room, Bucky already sprawled across the floor complaining about the godawful heat.

“Just wait ‘til August,” Steve had said, and smirked at Bucky’s drawn out groan.

Bucky had demanded dinner, but it was too hot in the apartment to even think about turning on the stove and so they ate yesterday’s soup right out of the pot, tepid but cooler than the sweat dripping into Steve’s eyes.

“We need beer,” Bucky insisted, after Steve stripped off his shirt to mop his face, then shoved it under the tap water and draped it, still soaking wet, over his head.

“You’re buying,” Steve informed him, wet cotton suctioned against his mouth, muffling his words.

“Punk. Tryin’ to chisel me out of my hard-earned dough.” But Bucky was already buttoning up his shirt and heading for the door, a blurred silhouette Steve had to blink to see.

Steve was on the roof by the time Bucky came up with the beer that he’d stashed in Mrs. Koppel’s fridge, already out of his shirt and tugging his undershirt over his head, rolling his trousers up above the knee.

They sprawled across the old quilt Steve had dragged up, limbs sticky with sweat and desperate for the hint of a breeze that ruffled the tree tops and the clothes Steve had left on the line.

“I’m gonna fucking melt,” Bucky complained, pressing the cold beer can to his forehead, shoving the other can against Steve’s chest to make him shriek. “And it’s only  _ June _ .”

“Nearly July.” Steve tilted the can up, draining half the beer in one swallow. Bucky watched his throat, pale eyes tracking the sweat trickling into the hollow above Steve’s collarbone. It was too hot to blush, but Steve couldn’t help swaying a little closer to his best friend. It didn’t happen very often—Steve didn’t know why it had started, didn’t know how to ask for it to happen again—but sometimes Bucky’s eyes would darken, watching him, and some time after dark he’d take his time stripping Steve bare, pressing teeth and tongue into the tender skin of Steve’s throat, along his concave chest, pressing into Steve and leaving him trembling, too overwhelmed to stand. Too confused to ask any questions, or beg for it to happen again.

“It better cool down by your birthday,” Bucky growled, and it took Steve a second to remember what he had said. “I’m not lighting firecrackers if we’re just gonna set the house on fire.”

“You never remember my birthday till the parade starts,” Steve pointed out, settling back onto his elbows and bending his knees just enough to get the breeze against his calves. He felt like he’d just come out of the public pool, sweat running in rivulets down his legs, his hair plastered to his forehead and the back of his neck.

“That was one year,” his friend whined, reaching out and tugging at the quilt where it had stuck to Steve’s thigh. Steve shivered, looked away and focused on his beer and the blistering sun as it finally set. “It’s hard to forget when you’ve got a damn countdown posted on the door.” He drained his beer and tossed the can onto their neighbors’ roof. The Hurleys and Steve and Bucky had a longstanding roof feud that had started with some lost marbles and a thrown coke bottle in 1925. “What do you want this year, anyway?”

Steve squinted at the sun and shook his head. He wanted to figure out what made Bucky lick his lips and lose control. If he knew what it was—a hard day at work, an uppity dame that wouldn’t give Buck the time of day, Steve’s mediocre soda bread—then he could make it happen every day, and never go to bed alone. “I want that cat’s eye shooter I loaned you,” he declared, the same as he had every year since they were ten. “The one you lost to Billy Hurley when you promised you wouldn’t play it unless you knew you’d win.”

“And you’ll get it,” Buck told him, opening a second beer and passing a fresh can to Steve, “soon as you get me back that autographed baseball you chucked at Ira’s head.” Ira Clearfield was an asshole who beat up girls, and would’ve deserved a baseball to the head—unfortunately, Ira was also Brooklyn’s best shortstop and had caught the ball, then beat up Steve and Bucky instead. “You want anything besides those marbles you lost?” Bucky goaded, grinning like he did every year, the joke as old as the scars on their palms when they’d used Joseph Rogers’s old pocketknife and sworn to be best friends forever and a day.

Steve let his head roll back, looking to his left where Bucky had flopped onto his stomach, resting his weight on his forearms and staring at Steve. He watched the setting sun cast shadows along Bucky’s back, dropped his gaze to the muscles in his best friend’s arms, skin pink from the sun and glistening with sweat. “No,” Steve croaked, fumbling for his beer and looking away before Bucky could catch his eye. “Not a thing,” he added, staring hard at the molten orange streaks limning the clouds and refusing to blink.

Bucky didn’t say anything, and after a moment Steve exhaled and let the tension drain out of his fists. He uncurled his hands, then jumped when something clammy pressed against his left palm.

Bucky didn’t say anything, and so neither did Steve, though he darted a gaze down to the quilt where Buck had curled his sweaty hand around Steve’s, slick and too hot under the damp chill from the beer. You couldn’t see their scars, palms pressed together like they had been all those years ago, biting their tongues through the pain, right hands in the air because Bucky said that was how you were supposed to take an oath.

Bucky squeezed Steve’s hand too tightly, and Steve smiled brighter than the last edge of the sun slipping over the horizon—the scars were always there, even when he couldn’t see them, just like the pile of cat’s eye marbles in the window because Bucky bought him one every year, the three signed baseballs they kept on a shelf over the lace Steve’s mother had brought from home.

“Ain’t gonna buy you a damn thing, punk,” Bucky whispered, and Steve slanted his eyes to the left, breath caught in his chest as he watched Bucky blink hard, staring down at their hands.

“That’s cause you’re a jerk,” Steve said back, just as soft, his fingertips white where they pressed too hard into Bucky’s hand. He hid his smile behind his beer, and Bucky flipped him off with his free hand, but it was hours before either of them let go.


End file.
